News in Articles

How Serious is Laughter?

In a homily, Karl Rahner once commented that in the Beatitudes in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus makes a rather stunning statement. He says, ‘blessed are you who are now weeping, for you shall laugh’. Rahner suggests that Jesus is teaching that our final state of happiness in heaven will not just lift us out of our sadness and dry away our tears, it will bring us to laughter, to “an intoxication of joy.” Laughter is integral to the final ecstasy.

The ONE and the MANY - Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations

 One of the most ancient problems in philosophy is the question of ‘the one and the many’, whether reality is ultimately a unity or a plurality and how these interrelate. We might ask the same question regarding the plurality of religious faiths, churches, and forms of worship in our world. Is there some inherent oneness there or is it all plurality without anything binding us together in some kind of community that transcends our differences?

The Night of Contemporary Youth: A reflection after the Economy of Francesco Event

 Pope Francis’ meeting with the thousand young people gathered in Assisi, from September 22-24, 2022, began with these words from the prophet Isaiah. They arrived from every corner of the world: from Aotearoa New Zealand to Patagonia, from Thailand to Mozambique and Mexico. Thanks to the coordination of the Focolare Movement, these young people – including students, entrepreneurs, activists and game-changers – were housed in 12 villages, set up between the historic center of Assisi and the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli.

The Anthropological Function of Gossip

In his novel, Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey offers this colorful image of gossip. The setting is a small town where there are rumors about the priest and a particular young woman. Here’s his metaphor: “The vicar of Woolahra then took her shopping and society, always feeling shopping to be the most intimate activity, was pleased to feel the steam pressure rising in itself as it got ready to be properly scandalized – its pipes groaned and stretched, you could hear the noises in its walls and cellars. 

Defying Darkness with Christmas Lights

 In the days of apartheid in South Africa, one of the ways people expressed their opposition and their belief that someday it would be overcome, was to light a candle and put it in a window where it could be seen by anyone passing by. A lit candle, publicly displayed, made a prophetic statement. It didn’t take long for the government to react. Placing a lit candle in your window became a criminal offense, equivalent to carrying an illegal firearm. The irony wasn’t lost on children. They joked, “Our government is afraid of lit candles!”

Hard Times in Europe: An economic policy of shared sobriety

Christmas in Difficult Times

 The Christmas we celebrate this year finds us in a state of war, on the sidelines of a dramatic situation where communities are destroyed, some people kill, and others die. Uncontrolled fury buries men and women under the rubble of their homes, hits the bewildered elderly, abandoned without support or assistance, and overwhelms children in the innocence of their daily lives.

Staring into the Light

 In her book, Kitchen Table Wisdom, Stories That Heal, medical doctor and writer, Rachel Naomi Remen shares this story. When she was fourteen years old, she took a summer job working as a volunteer in a nursing home for the aged. This wasn’t easy for her. She was young, shy, and mostly afraid of elderly persons. One day she was assigned to spend an hour visiting a ninety-six-year-old woman who had not spoken for over a year and suffered from severe dementia.

Many more women must have been involved in the birth and life of Jesus than we are told in the Gospels. So where are they all?

Let’s try putting some women back into the picture this Christmas.  A lot of families (surely it’s not just us) have extra sheep. Let’s add some female figures to represent what is, after all, the majority of the people in the pews, if not in the hierarchy. Let’s not just “value the contribution of women to the Church” (synodal Working Document); let’s try and make women more visible in every area of Church life, especially where our children can see them. Where are the women? Right in front of you.

Jesus' Dysfunctional Ancestry

 The full story of how Jesus Christ came to be born includes elements that we do not easily imagine when we sing our Christmas hymns. Jesus’ family tree and bloodline were far from perfect and this, according to the renowned biblical scholar, Raymond Brown, needs to be kept in mind whenever we are tempted to believe in Jesus, but want to reject the church because of its imperfections, scandals, and bad history.

Why suffering is the price we pay for living in a world that makes sense

 Seated one day at my desk at The Times where I worked as its religious affairs correspondent and weekly columnist, I took a call from someone I didn't know. A friend had told him, he said, that I had solved “the problem of evil” in one of my articles, and he wanted to know how I had done it. I couldn't remember: the article in question had appeared some years before.

God's anger - and our feelings of guilt and shame

My early religious training, for all its strengths, placed too heavy an emphasis on fear of God, fear of judgment, and fear of never being good enough to be pleasing to God. It took the biblical texts about God being angry and displeased with us literally.

The Beauty Of The Cross

The cross is a simple geometric figure, made of two perpendicular lines at right angles. This shape, known to different civilizations, is an archetypal symbol that has always been interpreted as a “passage,” a mediation between Earth and sky, the finite and the infinite, contingent and eternal.

You have less love in you now than when you were young

 The first chapter of the Book of Revelation contains a powerful challenge that’s hidden within the overall esoteric language of that book. John, its author, speaking in the voice of God, says something to this effect: I have seen how hard you work, I have seen your fidelity and your hunger for the truth; but I have this against you, “you have less love in you now than when you were young.” That stings! 

Reconciliation and Relationship, a Fruitful Pairing

The term reconciliation offers a splendid insight into our relational character as humans. Reconciliation always presupposes a preceding relational rupture. It is well known that contemporary philosophical reflection, thanks above all to personalism, has widely re-evaluated the notion of relationship, putting it in connection with that of identity and thus making a decisive contribution to overcoming interpretations of identity uncritically based on modern individualism and subjectivism, which understandably struggled to account for the anthropological relevance of reconciliation.

Multitasking: Opportunity or Weakness?

A significant feature of contemporary culture is the wealth of opportunity available to us, not least due to the increasing speed and power of technology. A term often used in this sphere is multitasking, which symbolically expresses both a mentality and an ideal: the possibility of carrying out concurrently an ever greater number of tasks, commitments and relationships. This is a wonderful possibility that was unthinkable until a few decades ago.

Business, Society and the Human Community

 Somewhere between “society” and “community,” the concept of “living together” is still searching for its right formula, as can be seen in settings like the family, religious associations, sport and work teams, and in the Church or in business. Indeed, Jürgen Habermas argued that community or society are not alternatives. In every human life, both are necessary.

In Exile - Marking an Anniversary

Forty years ago in November of 1982, I began writing this column while a doctoral student in Belgium. I chose to call it “In Exile” for two reasons.  Superficially, I chose this title because I was living in Europe, far from much of what I considered as home. While I was not pretending to be Robert Browning, writing Home-Thoughts, From Abroad, I did take an amateur’s delight in the small parallel.

CAN ANYTHING GOOD COME FROM OKARCHE OKLAHOMA?

It is not enough merely to have saints; we need saints for our times! An insightful comment from Simone Weil. The saints of old have much to offer; but we look at their goodness, faith, and selflessness and find it easier to admire them than to imitate them. Their lives and their circumstances seem so removed from our own that we easily distance ourselves from them.

Workaholism and Greed

There’s only one addiction for which we are praised – overworking. With every other addiction, concerned others are looking to put you into a clinic or into a recovery program, but if your addiction is work, generally it’s seen as virtue. I know of what I speak. I’m a “recovering workaholic”, and not exactly in full sobriety at the moment. However, I recognize the disease. Here are its symptoms: we are forever short of time with too many things to do. Our days are too short.